1 March 2016 update (details below): Two 2016 Oscar winners (Mark Rylance and Asif Kapadia) are officially ASS-HOLES
"We are a group of 700 extremely important and famous artists and actors. One of us was in a pop group 35 years ago and another played a minor character in one of the Harry Potter movies. We even boast a comedian who appeared in an episode of the Young Ones 33 years ago. In our letter to the Guardian we announced a boycott of Israel, singling out the tiny Jewish state for punishment for a set of made-up offences communicated to us by a respected member of the peaceful Hamas organisation. Of course, even if these fabricated offences were true we know they pale into insignificance compared with the crimes against humanity being carried out by many dozens of countries around the world, but we would never dream of criticising those countries and we would love to offer our services if only they would have us.
Our letter therefore proves beyond doubt that we are all
Anti-Semitic Sanctimonious Hypocritical Old Leftist Egotistical Scumbags (ASS-HOLES)
Hence, we are announcing today that we will not engage in business-as-usual cultural relations with ASS-HOLES - i.e. ourselves. We demand ASS-HOLES cease all participation in any event we have been invited to work on. This will be very painful as it means collectively we will have to turn down at least 3 jobs scheduled for the next 5 years. Since the boycott applies to all cultural and social interactions this also means that any ASS-HOLES who are married to each other must get divorced immediately. ASS-HOLES who have non-ASS-HOLES as partners should also ask their partners – and indeed all other family members - to cease speaking with them. For the sake of optimal family cohesion we recommend that ASS-HOLES remove themselves entirely from the family home and live in isolation. ASS-HOLES will continue our boycott of all ASS-HOLES until we stop spewing our anti-Semitic lies and admit that not only do we know nothing about Israel, but that we only signed our letter in the desperate hope of reviving our moribund careers. To see the full list of supporters, go to ASS-HOLESforpalestine.org.uk."
Peter Kosminsky, Mike Leigh, Jimmy McGovern, Phyllida Lloyd, Max Stafford-Clark, Will Alsop OBE, John Berger, Miriam Margolyes, Maggie Steed, Riz Ahmed, Anna Carteret, Jeremy Hardy, Brian Eno, Richard Ashcroft, Gillian Slovo, China Miéville, Aminatta Forna, Hari Kunzru, Liz Lochhead, Hanan Al-Shaykh, Peter Ahrends, David Calder, Caryl Churchill, Sacha Craddock, Selma Dabbagh, Ken Loach, Roger Michell, April De Angelis, Andy de la Tour, Mike Hodges, Rachel Holmes, Ann Jungman, Kika Markham, Simon McBurney, Andrew O’Hagan, Courttia Newland, Michael Radford, Lynne Reid Banks, Kamila Shamsie, Alexei Sayle, Roger Waters, Mark Thomas, Susan Wooldridge, Laura Mulvey, Pauline Melville, Khalid Abdalla, Bidisha, Nicholas Blincoe, Leah Borrromeo, Haim Bresheeth, Victoria Brittain, Niall Buggy, Tam Dean Burn, Jonathan Burrows, Taghrid Choucair-Vizoso, Ian Christie, Liam Cunningham, Ivor Dembina, Shane Dempsey, Patrick Driver, Okin Earl, Leon Rosselson, Sally El Hosaini, Paul Laverty, Eyal Sivan, John Smith, Mitra Tabrizian, Siobhan Redmond, Ian Rickson, Tom Leonard, Sonja Linden, David Mabb, Rose Issa, Gareth Evans, Alisa Lebow, Annie Firbank, James Floyd, Jane Frere, Kadija George, Bob Giles, Mel Gooding, Tony Graham, Penny Woolcock, Omar Robert Hamilton, James Holcombe, Adrian Hornsby, John Keane, Brigid Keenan, Hannah Khalil, Shahid Khan, Sabrina Mahfouz, Sarah McDade, Jonathan Munby, Lizzie Nunnery, Rebecca O’Brien, Timothy Pottier, Maha Rahwanji, Ravinder Randhawa, Leila Sansour, Seni Seneviratne, Anna Sherbany, Eyal Sivan, Kareem Samara, Cat Villiers, Esther Wilson, Emily Young, Andrea Luka Zimmerman, Jeremy Page, Sarah Streatfeild, Colin Darke, Russell Mills, Elaine Di Campo, Treasa O’Brien"We are a group of 700 extremely important and famous artists and actors. One of us was in a pop group 35 years ago and another played a minor character in one of the Harry Potter movies. We even boast a comedian who appeared in an episode of the Young Ones 33 years ago. In our letter to the Guardian we announced a boycott of Israel, singling out the tiny Jewish state for punishment for a set of made-up offences communicated to us by a respected member of the peaceful Hamas organisation. Of course, even if these fabricated offences were true we know they pale into insignificance compared with the crimes against humanity being carried out by many dozens of countries around the world, but we would never dream of criticising those countries and we would love to offer our services if only they would have us.
Our letter therefore proves beyond doubt that we are all
Anti-Semitic Sanctimonious Hypocritical Old Leftist Egotistical Scumbags (ASS-HOLES)
Hence, we are announcing today that we will not engage in business-as-usual cultural relations with ASS-HOLES - i.e. ourselves. We demand ASS-HOLES cease all participation in any event we have been invited to work on. This will be very painful as it means collectively we will have to turn down at least 3 jobs scheduled for the next 5 years. Since the boycott applies to all cultural and social interactions this also means that any ASS-HOLES who are married to each other must get divorced immediately. ASS-HOLES who have non-ASS-HOLES as partners should also ask their partners – and indeed all other family members - to cease speaking with them. For the sake of optimal family cohesion we recommend that ASS-HOLES remove themselves entirely from the family home and live in isolation. ASS-HOLES will continue our boycott of all ASS-HOLES until we stop spewing our anti-Semitic lies and admit that not only do we know nothing about Israel, but that we only signed our letter in the desperate hope of reviving our moribund careers. To see the full list of supporters, go to ASS-HOLESforpalestine.org.uk."
Update: 1 March 2016. Two of the 2016 Oscar winners are officially ASS-HOLES. Mark Rylance - the Brit who won Best Supporting Actor at the Oscars - is one of the signatories of the antisemitic boycott Israel campaign. The latest list is here. And of course Jeremy Corbyn is one of his mates (is there an antisemite he is not mates with?)
Another 2016 Oscar winner who is on the latest list of ASS-HOLES was Asif Kapadia who directed the film Amy which won the Best Documentary award. The film is about the late Jewish singer Amy Winehouse. Amy's father, Mitch called Kapadia’s film “a one dimensional, miserable and misleading portrayal of Amy”. But, of course, an ignorant bigot like Kapadia knows Amy better than her father....
See also: Schmucks: Oscar winner boycotting Israel
Update: 700 more artists now boycott Israel
Update: See Daphne Anson's analyis of the boycotters.
9 comments:
I was in London at the time of the Yom Kippur War and attended the big pro-Israel rally in Trafalgar Square. Lynne Reid-Banks was a keynote speaker - I remember how she spoke and wrote of the Jews' heroic efforts to hold onto and defend their "tiny sliver of a country". Her transformation is sad. These people certainly are egotistical grand-standers: why, for instance, do the thespians among them think that just because they have the ability to remember lines and pretend to be someone else for a living that they are qualified to pontificate on the problems of the Middle East? (Or, more accurately expressed, "to pontificate on the imagined sins of the world's only Jewish State?") Many of them would never be invited to Israel anyway, and are unlikely to have been heard of there, much less missed. This is especially true of the has-beens, but as the old saying goes "It's better to have been a has-been than a never was". The list beyond the 100 whose names appear in the Guardian letter contain some obscure "never wases" indeed, as well, inevitably, as the "second eleven", "third eleven" and so on of as-a-Jews. Some as-a-Jews are merely Jews by an accident of birth, and have no connection with Jewry, religious or cultural. They are "occasional Jews" - the occasions being when they sign letters such as that. I blogged about latest incidence of UK anti-Israelism this too and included some very telling "reasons" for signing the letter, in the self-important Israel-bashers' own words.
They are insignificant and won't be missed by Israel. Let them go perform in Gaza and for Isis. Now we know who these antisemites are we could boycott them but frankly no ones ever heard if most of these jewhating nut jobs
Let them go to Syria and try to perform for ISIS, where they will promptly be captured and cheerfully decapitated by bloodthirsty Moslems.
Daphne - have linked to your article. The statement by Andy de la Tour perfectly sums up the ignorance and hatred of these people. I had never heard of him before but after a quick check I note that, while he had some TV and film roles up to the late 1980s he does not appear to have been in anything since then. In no way is he therefore a forgotten nonentity looking for some new publicity .....
Thanks for the link, Edgar. I had vaguely heard of his sister Frances de la Tour but not of him.
The signatories' list becomes absurder by the minute: the anti-Israel crusader Ben White has signed, and so have several other usual suspects getting on the bandwagon by describing themselves as "writers" as if they are literary figures in the meaning of the act. At this rate the sub-editor of the Neasden News (if there is one) will be able to jump aboard. But as someone has just reminded me, the arch-egoist S. Fry is conspicuous by his absense, at least for the time being.
And Michael Rosen.
Emma Thompson has been a member of the British-based ENOUGH! coalition, aimed at ending the “Israeli occupation of the Gaza Strip and West Bank.”
Barry: Yes Emma Thompson is well known for her Israel hatred and insane political views generally.
One can only imagine that they'd all rather enjoy being raped by an angry Muslim Arab. What a vibrant and culturally diverse experience it would be.
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